Chamber and committees

After that rah-rah by the Scottish Government minister. To ask the Scottish Government—

As we have heard before, biological sex has been erased in data collection across our public institutions. However, this is not just about integrity of statistics—it is about safety. Recommendation 12 of the Sullivan review called for the national health service to stop allowing people to change their gender marker—especially children, as the review said that that poses a “serious safeguarding risk”. Shockingly, the Scottish National Party Government has already confirmed in writing that there are no plans to stop that practice. Will the cabinet secretary accept that the Government must now hit the brakes and commit to working with the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health to urgently implement that recommendation?

Will the minister take an intervention?

I, too, thank my colleague, Meghan Gallacher, for securing parliamentary time to debate such an important topic.

The centralisation of neonatal intensive care is causing massive concern among clinicians. Families have said that it could be catastrophic; there has been strong criticism of the arbitrary scoring mechanism; and it means that new parents to premature and seriously ill babies, at the most vulnerable point in their lives, could—as we have heard today—have to travel miles to visit them, in such difficult circumstances. Tragically, one parent said:

“you don’t know what to expect. The family could be called in at any minute to say goodbye.”

I ask members to imagine having to travel for hours to Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Glasgow to do so.

I pay tribute to campaigners who are fighting to stop the downgrading of existing facilities. The service at Ninewells hospital in Dundee, in my region, is one of those facilities. For more than 50 years, Ninewells has had a first-class AMU—alongside midwifery unit—with neonatal intensive care as part of that offer. The unit was refurbished in 1999. The AMU means that mums have a safety net, and a psychological boost from having access to obstetric labour suites, specialists and equipment almost at their bedside. The Dundee midwifery unit is separate from the obstetric consultant unit, but it is still in the hospital, which allows for easy access to medical support if that is needed.

For years, however, there has been a centralisation of maternity services in Tayside. When the Fyfe Jamieson maternity hospital in Forfar closed in 1993, it was to be replaced by a midwifery service at the new Whitehills health and community care centre. That did not last long before it closed, and mums were sent to Montrose and Arbroath.

When the Montrose community maternity unit shut in 2016 because of a lack of staff, that was supposedly for three months, but it never reopened. Proposals for a new maternity unit that was planned for two decades were shelved in 2013. The CMU was centralised to Arbroath, and I am told that the standard of care is second to none, but it is based in a building that is more than a century old, and there is little hope of it being replaced.

Why is that relevant to Ninewells? When previous closures have taken place in Angus, it has been with the facility at Ninewells in the background, as a safety net for the most difficult births in the community. As with many of the centralised services in Tayside, specialism has come at the cost of long drives, bus journeys, ambulance trips or plain old inaccessibility for people who do not have a car.

If Ninewells loses its top status for NIC, that could lead to an insane situation in which mums with sick babies living in Dundee will be sent 66 miles away, by the A90, to Aberdeen. As most of us—and most of our constituents, including mums and fathers—know, that would involve navigating the Forfar Road and half of the Kingsway, which is often at a standstill for hours of the day. Surely resourcing NHS Tayside is the best outcome, with a focus on recruitment and retention rather than the erosion of healthcare.

Finally, if even one tragedy can be averted by having a full local NICU, why take the risk?

The EHRC’s update was crystal clear, and there is a vacuum right now. Biological males should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities in workplaces or public buildings such as schools or hospitals. That is compulsory. It is the law, as the Supreme Court ruling and the EHRC have clearly laid out, yet John Swinney said yesterday that public bodies should wait for the “legal certainty” of full EHRC guidance in June before implementing new policies.

The Scottish Government is dragging its feet. Will it now finally stop kicking the can down the road and remove biological men from women’s spaces across the public sector—yes or no?

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the interim update from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission on the practical implications of the recent UK Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers. (S6T-02484)

The cabinet secretary talked about that meeting. We all know the truth behind that meeting. Last week, the First Minister stood up in this chamber and said that he would respect the rule of law and abide by the Supreme Court’s ruling. This morning, Scottish National Party MSPs voted to keep Green MSP Maggie Chapman as deputy convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee after she shockingly attacked the highest court in the land following the verdict.

Maggie Chapman has shown contempt for the rule of law and has brought the committee into disrepute, when it should be scrutinising the implementation of the Supreme Court’s judgment. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the SNP’s decision to keep her in post on the committee risks undermining trust in Holyrood itself—yes or no?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. This bears no relation to the topical question in hand.

Scotland’s public bodies are, by definition, an extension of the Scottish Government. Last week, the Supreme Court exposed the Scottish Government’s fallacy, but the SNP’s reckless ideology has become embedded, like Japanese knotweed, in our public institutions.

While this smacks of asking an arsonist to extinguish the fire, will the cabinet secretary secure written assurances from all the Government’s public bodies that they will put in place policies complying with the Supreme Court ruling within three months of her meeting with the EHRC?

I, too, thank Douglas Lumsden for securing time for this important debate on NHS Grampian.

Healthcare in the north-east is in crisis as a result of years of chronic underfunding of NHS Grampian by the SNP Government. The health board is financially crippled. The situation is so desperate that it has had to take out a £67.5 million loan from the Scottish Government, bringing the total debt that it owes to £92.2 million. There are huge questions about how that debt will be serviced, given that the health board is already trying to make eye-watering savings. It is almost impossible—how can it pay a debt when it cannot make ends meet?

The reality is that NHS Grampian has been short-changed by more than £260 million—a quarter of a billion pounds—since the SNP got into power. The SNP Government’s parity formula is not worth the paper that it is written on.

That underfunding has resulted in the erosion of community hospitals, closed in-patient facilities and the end of night-time minor injuries units. It also means that NHS Grampian has the lowest bed base in Scotland.

All that has created substantial pressures on hospitals, GPs and the Scottish Ambulance Service, with crews queuing for hours just to get in the door of Aberdeen royal infirmary—a symptom of a system that is stretched beyond its limits.

That is why a critical incident was declared at ARI last November, when patients were diverted from the hospital because the capacity simply was not there. On that day, a dedicated ambulance crew saved the lives of a couple. The crew decided that, if they went to NHS Grampian, the couple probably would not have had their lives saved. The ambulance was diverted—it was blue-lighted all the way through to Dundee and NHS Tayside, double or triple the distance.

Upwards of 3,000 patients in the NHS Grampian area have been languishing on waiting lists for more than two years. The health board’s cancer waiting times are the worst in Scotland, with more than 40 per cent of patients waiting longer than two months to receive their first treatment after being referred. That means lives not just put on hold but put at risk, because we know the pivotal importance of early intervention. It is a ticking time bomb.

Despite the brilliant efforts of NHS staff, NHS Grampian received red ratings for nearly two thirds of its key targets between October and December 2024.

I rarely agree with Kevin Stewart, but, as my colleagues have said, he was spot on when he rightly pointed out that the national treatment centre for Grampian is on ice. The Baird family hospital and the ANCHOR projects have been beset by problems, delays and design issues. What is the SNP Government’s response? To carry out a patchwork of short-term fixes and make empty promises. It is no wonder that Audit Scotland has highlighted the lack of a strategic vision, and that NHS workers are sounding the alarm.

The SNP has failed the north-east. It has failed our NHS. Today, Neil Gray must apologise for the harsh financial conditions that his Government have created for NHS Grampian. My constituents, and the constituents of other MSPs who are speaking on their behalf, deserve better than this.